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In Girls Coming to Tech! Amy Sue Bix offers a fascinating account of how women's enrollment in American undergraduate engineering programs gradually rose and of the many challenges women encountered as students and then professionals.... As someone who has been the 'first female to hold my position' for more than 25 years, I appreciate the level of care and detail that Bix invests in Girls Coming to Tech! Despite the topic being an area of intense interest for me, I learned a great deal from her account.

In Girls Coming to Tech! Professor Amy Bix develops the exciting story that fills the gap in the burgeoning literature focused on women in science of the overlooked and understudied history of women in engineering. Through in-depth case studies of Georgia Tech, Caltech, and MIT, she documents how both the women seeking degrees in engineering and each institution struggled with women's acceptance into the profession in unique ways that depended upon the particular region of the country, public or private status, decade in which the struggle reached its pinnacle, and the institution's leadership. This volume not only provides a good read, but also the background that will be key to solving the current problem of why the percentage of women majoring in engineering remains below 20 percent, and has even decreased slightly in the last few years.

Sue V. Rosser

Provost, San Francisco State University, and author of Breaking into the Lab: Engineering Progress for Women in Science

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Summary

How women coped with both formal barriers and informal opposition to their entry into the traditionally masculine field of engineering in American higher education.

Engineering education in the United States was long regarded as masculine territory. For decades, women who studied or worked in engineering were popularly perceived as oddities, outcasts, unfeminine (or inappropriately feminine in a male world). In Girls Coming to Tech!, Amy Bix tells the story of how women gained entrance to the traditionally male field of engineering in American higher education.

As Bix explains, a few women breached the gender-reinforced boundaries of engineering education before World War II. During World War II, government, employers, and colleges actively recruited women to train as engineering aides, channeling them directly into defense work. These wartime training programs set the stage for more engineering schools to open their doors to women. Bix offers three detailed case studies of postwar engineering coeducation. Georgia Tech admitted women in 1952 to avoid a court case, over objections by traditionalists. In 1968, Caltech male students argued that nerds needed a civilizing female presence. At MIT, which had admitted women since the 1870s but treated them as a minor afterthought, feminist-era activists pushed the school to welcome more women and take their talent seriously.

In the 1950s, women made up less than one percent of students in American engineering programs; in 2010 and 2011, women earned 18.4% of bachelor's degrees, 22.6% of master's degrees, and 21.8% of doctorates in engineering. Bix's account shows why these gains were hard won.

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Authors

Amy Sue Bix

Amy Sue Bix is Professor in the Department of History at Iowa State University, where she is also the Director of the Center for Historical Studies of Technology and Science.

Reviews

In Girls Coming to Tech! Amy Sue Bix offers a fascinating account of how women's enrollment in American undergraduate engineering programs gradually rose and of the many challenges women encountered as students and then professionals.... As someone who has been the 'first female to hold my position' for more than 25 years, I appreciate the level of care and detail that Bix invests in Girls Coming to Tech! Despite the topic being an area of intense interest for me, I learned a great deal from her account.

Maria Klawe

Science

The book is a must-read for those interested in engineering history, women's history, and the history of education as well as for everyone seeking to improve the situation of women students, faculty, and administrators.

Technology and Culture

Endorsements

In Girls Coming to Tech! Professor Amy Bix develops the exciting story that fills the gap in the burgeoning literature focused on women in science of the overlooked and understudied history of women in engineering. Through in-depth case studies of Georgia Tech, Caltech, and MIT, she documents how both the women seeking degrees in engineering and each institution struggled with women's acceptance into the profession in unique ways that depended upon the particular region of the country, public or private status, decade in which the struggle reached its pinnacle, and the institution's leadership. This volume not only provides a good read, but also the background that will be key to solving the current problem of why the percentage of women majoring in engineering remains below 20 percent, and has even decreased slightly in the last few years.

Sue V. Rosser

Provost, San Francisco State University, and author of Breaking into the Lab: Engineering Progress for Women in Science

One of the greatest innovations in recent American engineering is nothing technical: it is the new awareness that women can and should participate in the enterprise. The book shows the power of cultural forces that have for so long kept women away from engineering—and the power of institutional and individual courage in challenging these forces. This long-needed study is a triumph in substance and tone.

Rosalind Williams

Bern Dibner Professor of the History of Science and Technology, MIT

Bix has amply documented the attitudes and circumstances surrounding the coming of coeducation to American engineering, chiefly in the years after the Curtiss-Wright cadettes of World War II. In so doing she has broken new ground in the field of gender and technology. In particular she shows that while most trustees, deans, faculty members and their advisors came grudgingly to approve of the move to admit (a few) women students, the male students, individually and through their various fraternities and publications, were largely and vehemently opposed. Their stunted psychosocial responses, including ostracism, exclusion, ridicule, misogyny, voyeurism, pornography, stalking, and more, were out of all proportion to the actual threat. Engineering evidently needed women, and fortunately an intrepid few stayed to fight.